Page 24 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
I fear this must be goodbye.
Tonight, King Friedemar is hosting a ball in the hopes of finding himself a wife, and I plan to attend. Though I grow older and more unwanted by Spindleton society every year, perhaps I might yet find some joy tonight in dancing again.
This will be my last letter. It would be cruel to force my future husband to compete with the ghost of a boy I once knew. But I will cherish our friendship always.
Goodbye, Bene.
I wish you well.
The letter slips from my fingers as the change comes upon me hot and fast. My skin melts away, shifting to hard scale. My bones twist. My body lengthens. All thoughts of war—of Malice—are scorched into nothing in the next moment as I stand before the Corona in my dragon form.
Aurelia is walking straight into death’s jaws, not even knowing the danger that awaits her.
A roar bursts from my chest, raw and primal. As if in reply, white-hot flames erupt around the Corona’s base, ringing the crown in fire. The long-dormant relic is awake.
Never before have I stood so close to the Corona Ignis. Not since my father still lived.
But back then, it was his to bear.
Now, it calls to me. It whispers. Ittempts.
And as I stare into the depths of the flames, a hunger I have always feared sparks to life deep in my soul. The very hunger my uncle promised would consume me in the end.
A hunger born of my Shade.
Greed. It is every dragon’s burden to bear—that desire for more than we are given. The desire to conquer. To hoard. But for a Dragon King, the burden is magnified a hundredfold.
For only we are entrusted with power beyond all imagining.
For only we can bear the Corona Ignis.
Possibilities pulse all around me, as thick and endless as the threads of magic weaving through the air. They serenade me with their siren’s song. No magic would be beyond me if I only took up the Corona. If I only claimed it for my own.
With it, I could doanything. Before my uncle’s curse destroyed me completely.
« You must choose. »
Those three words boom through my mind, tolling with all the finality of a death knell. But I already know what I must do before the Aether speaks. My choice was made for me long ago.
It was made for me seventeen years ago when a precious girl gifted me a single pink rose and bid me never to forget her.
As if any dragon could ever forget hisdrakira.
As if any man could ever forget the woman fated to be his undoing.
Chapter 8
Aurelia
Now
My guilt follows me from the fairy circle all the way to the royal palace.
As I step down from our carriage, assisted by a footman in blue and gold livery, all I can think about is that letter. About how unkind I was to Bene. About howthatwill now be his final memory of me—
Not the girl who once knew all his secrets.
Not the friend who once soared through the heavens atop his back.
